For years, property owners have struggled with the annual ordeal of hanging holiday decorations on their homes and businesses. As every homeowner knows, hanging holiday lights and decorations is a time-consuming effort. Moreover, hanging holiday lights and decorations normally requires the use of nails, staples, hooks, or hot glue, each of which is semi-permanently hammered, driven or otherwise affixed to a building structure. Commonly, nails or hooks are applied to a home's exterior walls or fascia boards, and then holiday lights, garlands or other seasonal decorations can be hung from these nails or hooks. Similarly, staples can be driven into an exterior wall or fascia board in order to staple a strand of holiday lights, garland or wreath in place. Likewise, holiday decorations can even be affixed in place using a hot glue gun.
But nails and staples, once installed, are difficult to remove. Further, upon removal, they leave holes in the building structure. Use of these fasteners on stucco exteriors can also cause significant cracking in the stucco surface of a structure. These resulting holes and cracks must either be patched—entailing additional effort, as part of the seasonal-decoration removal process—or they are left, thereby exposing the building structure to the elements, putting the building structure at greater risk of damage and decay, due to incursion by water, fungi or insects.
On the other hand, leaving nails or staples in place after the seasonal decorations are removed creates a problem of unsightliness. This problem is compounded in the case of hooks installed for hanging seasonal decorations. A hook, such as a picture hanger, is typically larger and more noticeable than a nail or staple alone. Finally, use of glue to affix seasonal decorations either attaches those decorations permanently in place, or causes significant damage to paint, wood or stucco upon removal.
These difficulties and issues renders the process of installing and then removing holiday decorations to be take more time than the average homeowner would like to invest during typically hectic holiday seasons. As a result, homeowners may install fewer holiday decorations than they would otherwise wish or may even cause them to forego the holiday decorating process altogether.
Thus, there is a need to be able to hang decorations on the inside or outside of a building structure—such as, for example, Christmas lights on the exterior of a home, or garlands and wreaths on the interior walls of a home—using a device and method that allow the permanent placement of a hanging device which can be concealed when not in use and which can be used to quickly and efficiently hang decorations again when the next holiday season arrives.
A convenient and concealable hook is also needed in the interior of homes and businesses where residents or patrons want to temporarily hang outerwear, such as coats, or carried items, such as purses or backpacks. While it is common to use coat racks or large hooks for these applications, those permanently-visible hooks can be considered unsightly in modern homes and businesses. Additionally, due to the size of coat racks and large hooks, they are often placed in only a few locations, and are often an inconvenient distance away from where the owner of the coat or purse will be during his or her visit. This can limit their usefulness, particularly with respect to the hanging of valuable items such as purses or expensive coats. It is also understood that many women feel uncomfortable and worried by the prospect of leaving their purses in a location is that is out of reach and unsecured. That said, leaving a purse on the floor of a bar or a restaurant is undesirable because of food or drink that is spilled on the floor and the potential for exposing the purse to dirt, germs and bacteria on the floor. Leaving a “soft-sided” purse on the floor is also undesirable because, when placed on the floor such purses will often flop over and spill their contents. Likewise, hanging a purse on the back of a chair is often undesirable because, while nearby, it still leaves the purse generally behind or to the side of the seated owner, thereby making the purse more easily subject to being knocked to the floor by inadvertent passersby or being picked (or even stolen entirely) by a thief.
Moreover, in certain environments, such as restaurants and bars, the number of permanent coat racks or exposed hooks needed for patrons to hang purses and coats can detract from both the appearance of the establishment as well as permanently take up valuable floor space that could otherwise be occupied by patrons. In those bars and restaurants that use conventional hooks under the main bar or on table edges to hang purses and coats, those large hooks may cause injury to the knees and legs of unknowing or unassuming patrons.
Thus, there is a further need to be able to have convenient, inconspicuous and concealable hooks in homes and businesses that are permanently affixed to walls, restaurant tables, bars and booths, but that can be concealed when not in use and that do not have dangerous projections, thereby preserving the appearance of the interior and making better use of the available home or restaurant space, while enhancing the security and availability of the purse or coat which has been hung upon such a concealable hook.